Do Older Women Really Need (Want) a Man?

My divorced friend reads a lot about dating. Recently she sent me an article from Self. Self? I didn’t even know Self still had a website. It was about how women in their seventies didn’t need men. They are happy by themselves, going out with their girlfriends, traveling. Happy to be independent. I get it. My friend who still reads books about dating also tells me about how to judge relationships. How to watch out for red flags, yellow flags. Right from the beginning I knew there were a lot of red flags in our relationship. You sometimes ignore red flags.

We met during the pandemic. For the first time in my life, I was lonely. After my husband died I had been so busy going back and forth to my job in Washington and spending New York weekends with my friends and DC weekends with my grandson. But then everything stopped. My office was closed. We worked at home online. Three of my closest friends moved, one to the Hamptons, two to Florida. Yes, I was a little lonely.

Finally I went on a dating app. I had high standards. They had to live nearby and have a graduate degree. The men I met had good stories. One had a teenage love affair with Judy Garland. He told me about it within ten minutes. Another, a geophysicist, had predicted Hurricane Sandy. Both were interesting enough, but for only one date.

He was the third man I met. It was the second year of the pandemic. We had dinner at a nearby almost empty restaurant. We sat in the back and talked for a long time. We walked together to the corner and he got a taxi. They were easy to get. He didn’t walk me home. Red flag? Yellow flag? I liked him. I invited him to dinner at my apartment. Stupid me, I didn’t know it was too soon. I hate to cook but I managed a chicken stew. He said it was tasty. Maybe it was. That night we started holding on to each other.

He was from Queens, went to Stuyvesant High School where the smartest boys went, and to Columbia Law School. I thought he was the nice Jewish lawyer from Queens my parents expected me to marry. I married a British journalist in a trench coat from Newcastle-on-Tyne. He brought me food I hadn’t eaten since my childhood. Noodle pudding, potato pancakes, and rugelach. He called me every day. He liked my apartment. I have a nice apartment. I never saw his apartment. Red flag.

I introduced him to my friends. I took him out to the Hamptons for a weekend at that good friend’s house, invited him to a couple of events where I knew a lot of people. I even introduced him to one of my sons. Some of my friends liked him. My cousin didn’t. He could always tell who didn’t like him.

We didn’t do much. Dinner, sometimes watched a movie and talked. We could always talk. About politics, history, our past, our children.. But I never met any of his friends or family. Not in all the years. Yes, I know. Red flag, red flag, red flag.

So should we just end it in silence? Or should I call and tell him what I didn’t like and how what I didn’t like kept building up? Should I hear his complaints about me and have a final argument? But I don’t want that. I always tried to avoid that. I think he could be very nasty. Should I call him, be gracious, and just wish him well? But why bother. He hasn’t called me.

I know my friends keep saying they don’t want a man. They don’t mind being alone. They have good times with their girlfriends. They wouldn’t want a man around all the time. They like to do what they want to do when they want to do it. And, yes, I can feel that way too. But I like men. I loved my father, my brother, my husband, as difficult as he sometimes could be. I love my sons. I like the men I worked with. Part of the me I am is the me I am with a man. I hate to think that is over. But, no, I’ve decided I won’t call him. Of course, it is obvious, our relationship was dwindling away. He didn’t make me feel less lonely. Sometimes he even made me feel lonelier. So, there is nothing for me to say. Not even good-bye.

Do any of you feel like the above woman? Let us know in the comments below.